Steve Little has a message for anyone who thinks of ham radio operators as relics of the past: Stop by Evanston's Grosse Point Lighthouse on Saturday to see otherwise. Lighthouses and ham operators might seem like an odd pairing, but it's part of an international event meant to draw attention to both. About 35 members of the Metro Amateur Radio Club are participating in the "International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend," said Little, the group's...

Joseph J. Schroeder Jr. was a student at New Trier High School during World War II when a neighbor who was a radio operator in the Merchant Marine told him that if he took the school's course in radio code, he'd "never carry a rifle. " Mr. Schroeder went on to pass both the class and the amateur radio exam, and at 16 received his call sign, W9JUV, which over the next 67 years would become legendary in ham radio circles. The longtime Glenview resident was recently named by the National...

Ham radio operators in the U.S. have been an important source of information about the disaster in Mexico City, and on Friday night they were among the first people outside the stricken area to know of the second quake. Frank Kemper, of La Jolla, Calif., was monitoring ham radio transmissions from Mexico City when he heard an operator pause and exclaim: "Stand by! It started shaking again! It's a big one this time! . . ." He then went silent. Other American operators were momentarily...

William Coons of Lombard was inducted into the Illinois Aviation Hall of Fame on Wednesday — a soaring feat for a pilot who started taking flying lessons at age 60. Coons, 83, became an early expert on flight navigation using the global positioning system. He conducted safety seminars on GPS using a 1946 open-cockpit Ercoupe plane that he owned. He also volunteered for many years as an aviation safety counselor with the Federal Aviation Administration in the Chicago area.

"This is N9OLA, Magee School, Round Lake." "KC5ACR--Atlantis. Go ahead with your questions." With these words, several area students began forging their place in history. For about four minutes Tuesday, as the space shuttle Atlantis orbited over the United States, student "astronauts" spoke with a NASA counterpart aboard the space craft over amateur, or "ham," radio. One of only eight schools in the nation to be so honored, Magee Middle School was selected in September to...

Q. The tenants who lease my single-family home have become ham radio enthusiasts. Without asking me, they erected an antenna in the backyard. It's unsightly and, according to neighbors, emits an annoying noise that disrupts their sleep. The tenants claim that under federal law, they're entitled to erect what they need to get reception. Is this true? A. Your tenants must be thinking of the FCC rules that were issued (and occasionally amended) after the federal Telecommunications...

Local amateur ham radio operators sounded off Monday night during a City Council meeting against a proposed ordinance that would restrict radio antennas in residential neighborhoods. The City Council put off voting on the ordinance, which would restrict radio antennas to no more than 10 feet high. It would also limit the number of satellite dishes and radio antennas to one per lot. Because of the radio operators' objections, the council agreed to review Federal...

Steve Little has a message for anyone who thinks of ham radio operators as relics of the past: Stop by Evanston's Grosse Point Lighthouse on Saturday to see otherwise. Lighthouses and ham operators might seem like an odd pairing, but it's part of an international event meant to draw attention to both. About 35 members of the Metro Amateur Radio Club are participating in the "International Lighthouse and Lightship Weekend," said Little, the group's...

Bill Will of Mokena is in his second year as president of the Suburban Technical Amateur Radio System (STARS). The volunteer organization serves ham radio operators in an area stretching from Indiana to Chicago, the western suburbs and into the southern suburbs. Q. What is a ham radio? A. A ham radio generally (broadcasts on) frequencies the government has allowed amateur radio operators to use. The radios allow us to transmit and receive on those frequencies. Radios range from...

Nothing was more gratifying for Jim Dollinger, a former teacher and administrator for Naperville School District 203, than to watch a light go on in a student's head, loved ones say. "And when it took a little longer for a student to understand what he was trying to teach them, that meant even more to him," said his wife, Linda. During his 33 years as an educator, Mr. Dollinger also sometimes handled the unpleasant task of expelling students, his wife said. "Each and every student he...

Ham radio was the love of William Fanckboner's life. It also introduced him to his wife, Suzanne Randall. "They talked a little bit on the radio and the next week went out for dinner," said his daughter, Robin Randall. Six months later, in 1950, they were married. Mr. Fanckboner, 80, of Mt. Prospect died of complications from heart valve surgery Friday, July 30, in Evanston Hospital. Mr. Fanckboner was born in Terre Haute, Ind. His family moved to Wilmette when he was a young boy. He...

Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See By Robert Kurson Random House, 306 pages, $25.95 How wrapped up in fear we are; how it constrains our plans, our hopes. That's never clearer than in contrast with someone who has so many obvious things to fear but shakes off those concerns and lives more fully than the rest of us in the human herd -- someone like Mike May, whose astonishing story is memorably told in Robert Kurson's "Crashing Through: A True Story of...

It hit Frank Christensen like a bolt of lightning back in 1967. Christensen was a sophomore at East Aurora High School when a teacher introduced the class to amateur radio. "My teacher sat down and within a few minutes found contacts from Iowa, Kentucky, then Tennessee and suddenly . . . there was England," recalled Christensen. "My reaction was, This is incredible!" Little did Christensen know he would make ham radio a life-long hobby. But how well would the same scenario play today when a direct call to...

Dewitt Lane Jones II, died Jan. 29, 2006 in Charlotte, NC. The son of Louis Dewitt Jones and Edna Blish, he was born in Kenilworth, IL on Christmas Day 1917. He was a graduate of New Trier High School in Winnetka Il and Dartmouth College. He served the Army Air Corps in World War II and attained the rank of Major. After the war, he worked for The Walt Disney Company and later joined the Leo Burnett Advertising Company where he rose to the position of senior Vice President, heading accounts such as United...

Members of the Lake County Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES), one of the largest ham radio organizations in the United States, participated in the international exercise Field Day over the weekend, honing their skills in preparation for the day that civil disaster strikes Lake County. Working without sources of commercial power, the hams practiced communicating with other operators under emergency conditions-in which sources of power are limited to generators provided by...

Hundreds of amateur radio operators gathered last weekend to buy and sell equipment and swap stories of foreign contacts during the 58th annual Hamfest at the Will County Fairgrounds in Peotone. "The farthest contact I ever made was Botswana," said James Riley, a three-year veteran ham radio operator from Homer Township. Making contact with people all over the world, "that's what's fun," he said. Known as KB9CYL, the call sign assigned to him by the FCC, Riley said last names...

Battling high wind and driving rain, a small group of amateur radio operators camped out in tents last weekend for National Field Day, an event that challenges participants to learn how to provide communications in the event of a natural disaster. Ironically, members of the Schaumburg Amateur Radio Club ended up in the middle of a rainstorm that made the event more true-to-life than the group had anticipated. "The purpose of the event is simply to make as many contacts as...